Room to Breathe

It's raining again. Just when I think the knee-high grass weeds have dried out enough to hit with the Whack-O-Matic, we're slammed with another batch of showers. If you've been a reader for some time, you'll remember that although I'm fond of rain, I'm not so fond of what happens to my yard when it falls. In a nutshell, I have a grading problem that causes the back bedroom of my attached apartment to flood when water wicks up through the concrete pad. However, today it's raining buckets, and I'm not the least bit stressed about it, because when my  tenant moved out last month, I closed off the bedroom and rented the place out as a studio only. This way I no longer have to deal with the dreaded knock on the door, followed by, "My bedroom carpet is soaked".

I've thought about turning the former bedroom into a massage space as it's much larger than my camper-studio, but then clients would have to walk through my house or go through the gate and past two over-zealous dogs. Plus, on days like this, the back yard is a virtual mud bath. So I gave the room to S instead. Recently, S, who has been sharing this little house with me since August, wrote about needing a room of one's own. After mulling it over, we agreed he'd take the room to use as an office, to practice yoga, or just to have a space he can call his own. He's already begun browsing paint chips, made plans to vapor-seal the floor, and put up lattice on which to grow flowering vines.

Yesterday I created a pathway through the yard  with red and gray stone blocks to where the gate will be. Looking at the crooked little path out the living room window this morning, I felt a twang of envy. Although this was my home before S moved in, none of the rooms are just for me. We share them all, save for J's bedroom, which lays in wait for his return from Mexico in a couple of weeks.

As the rain picks up intensity, I decide I'd better get my butt in gear and prepare for my next client. Inside my little camper, I turn on the heater, plug in the table warmer, put on some music, light a candle or two. After dressing the table with flannel sheets and covering the face cradle with a cotton protector, I lean back against pillows on the sofa/daybed to take a few deep breaths before E's arrival. Looking around the room, I begin to relax. Burlap on the ceiling, wooden shades over the windows, the smell of lavender and sage and rosemary wafting up from the oil as it warms. And the rain. Fat drops tink-tinking on the roof, splashing onto the driveway, nudging the wind chimes into a clunky little woodsong.

This is my room, I think to myself. A place I can come to--even when I don't have a client--to rest, to write, or just to soak up the leftover bits of sweetness bouncing off  paneled walls. As Brendan Kennelly asks in his poem, "We Are Living," What is this room, but the moments we have lived in it? 

This moment right here? Lived perfectly.

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Comments

[Fran aka Redondowriter]

Ah, nice, nice. Everyone is getting ready for spring in SLO, even though we've got your rain now.

[Sue Richards]

I think of my mother, born in 1913. I'm betting she never had any space that she could escape to and call her own.

I crave space. I get a bit nutty if someone encroaches too far or for too long on the space I have. And yet some of my friends cannot bear to have their own. Everything must be together. I'm forever curious of the immense differences between us all.

Your camper sounds like heaven to me.

Sue